ozone is bad for you to be in contact with (carcinogen maybe?) what type of crop in what type of system are you having fungus problems with? the only hydro growers i know using 02 generators are using it to control the smell of the rather pungent plants they are growing ;) ~Ryan

I am curious about the effectiveness of ozone generators in combatting mold and mildewe which has built up in a house I have been working on. Would it be like fumigating for insects? I would only generate the ozone while no one was in the house

Ozone generators for killing mold and Fungus is used in Canada and the US. Medallion Healthy Homes is a service provider using high levels of Ozone. They use a system of generators that produce only clean Ozone. There are two types of Ozone generators(Carona Dicharge and UV. Carona Discharge creates ozone when it passes air between two electrical fields. The carona discharge creates nitrous along with ozone. The nitrous will cause damage to plastics. The UV system is clean and causes no colateral damage.
No people, pets or living plants are allowed when doing high level shock treatments. If you use ozone at low levels around .05 parts per million it will keep your air frsh and clean.
Ozone will kill germs, virus's, mold, fungus. Ozone will eliminate smoke odors and pet odors.

I am a retail hydro store owner, I am telling you I have gotten a few for a customer who had problems with pythium, he runs the ozone pump continuously and has had no problems. I am not advertising here so I am limited to what I can say but there are ozone pumps on ebay by enaly that are cheap and work great. Ozone in high concentration can harm you. It can make your lungs bleed and you will drown in your own blood. But it has to be highly concentrate, Ozone in the water from this pump is not strong enough to do damage to you. Unless you are dunking your head into the water and drowning yourself LOL. I used to work for a company that used an ozone generator to kill smells in homes. We had to make the people leave the house run the machines for 24hrs, leave notices on all entrances, and come back wearing a gas mask open all windows and doors and let it eevacuate for at least 20-30 minutes before anyone could enter. I doubt we went through all that for nothing but it was an industrial strength generator so it produced mass amounts of ozone. There are small units for air that people run all day in offices/homes with no ill effects. All in all it is a safe idea for cleaning your water, only problem is it can kill beneficial bacteria and fungus as well. So if you need to use a product like subculture or Voodoo Juice/Pirahna to add these back to the water after ozonation if you only use it once to clean. Hope this helped and didn't ramble too much,

Using ozone for algae control intrigued me enough that I bought an ozone generator and OPR (Oxidation Reduction Potential) meter to test the idea. Use a 5-gallon bucket of tap water and initially starting with an OPR reading of 220 I ran the ozone generator through a bubbler stone for 90 minute. At the end of 60 minutes I noticed the reading leveling off at about 550 and never got above that after 90 minutes. I suspect the RH (relative humidity) in my area (which is high) had something to do with it and maybe the temperature of the water.
I never got to that magic 650 mV number needed for disinfection. The pH at 550 was 8.5. For best efficiency the manufacturer recommends a desiccant filter for the ozone generator inlet. I think I'll try that next.

Trying JKIRK's suggestion I tried to get an OPR reading of 650 using one of my airlift buckets.
Starting with a tap water reading of 220 it took about 50 minutes to reach 650. RH was 46%, temperature about 85 deg.

I'll try this technique going forward prior to adding the nutrient concentrate and see if this makes a difference in the algae growth. If nothing else this should delay the appearance of algae. Thanks again JKIRK for the suggestion.

Jkirk and Hank, I like your out of the box thinking. I have used ozone in some of my projects. I offer some advice.
1)You will want to look into HDPE tubs/buckets/fittings, and tyvek tubing, or you will have bag off gassing from the plastics.
2)Algae are living organisms that adapt genetically to a constant level of 03. UV or algicide works better.
3)650mv is pretty high for plant application. Perhaps you will see better results @ 350.
4)Foliar applications will leave tissue damage.

Maintaining 650 is not easy. The generator will need to be run continuously. Once the solution reaches 650 and the generator removed it only take a few minutes for the ORP to drop to pre-sterilization levels.

I was thinking about using this method to sterilize CT (compost tea). I know I can kill the microbes in the CT but not sure what affect it will have on the nutrients in the tea.

The "toxins" I referred to are ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, etc., which in sufficient quantity can be harmful. The aerobic microbes produces "wastes" that is good for plants otherwise why use CT in the first place. However, as a nutrient solution CT has a big disadvantage and that is what happens to the microbes over time in a hydroponic setup. The microbes having run out of food or oxygen will die and eventually decay. The idea is to sterilize the CT and remove the microbes after it had time to produce a good nutrient rich solution.
Now is this organic "soup", now free of microbes, just as good as an equivalent inorganic solution? I don't know the answer to that question.

Ozone generator types are for mini handling, portable, carriable, pushable,etc. for air and water ozone, withe the output for 200mg/hr to 120g/hr, even bigger 1000g/hr. You can choose the correct ozone unit to assembly.
Shenzhen PDM-Electronic.Co.,LTD has almost all type ozone units. The ozone cell is with ozone output can be choosen from 20mg/hr, 50mg/hr to 1g/hr for air cool, 10g/hr, 20g/hr, 40g/hr for all air cool, 20g/hr, 25g/hr, to 1000g/hr for water cool. The types of ozone cell is stainless steeltube, quartz glass, ceramic slice, ceramic tube, ceramic board, enamel tube, etc. AC110V, AC220V, DC12.

Hi. Ozone is quite effective in eliminating mold and bacteria, so I think you should try one. You can check the chart on the website I link to, it explains various technologies and the problems they combat best.

aprint
As the HEPA air purifier salesman you are, you completely misunderstood what the a "Ozone Generator" is for in hydroponic systems. A Ozone Generator is not for purifying the air, it's to oxygenate the water. A HEPA filter does not supply dissolved oxygen to water. It filters particles from the air.

I just purchased the Cuisine Clean veggie cleaner (ozone generating veggie cleaner). I mostly did it because I love, love, love fresh food and I even want to start gardening next year and an agitating ozone generating machine seemed like the best system for cleaning my food. When I first saw the unit, I suspected that the basket was made of plastic (which I usually avoid), but read that ozone eats plastic. I searched for a plastic free cleaner that agitates the vegetables, but couldn't find any with a decent price. So I took a chance and purchased this one and sure enough, the basket was indeed made of plastic.

Here is the big question: Do I need to be concerned about phthalates and bpa because of the plastic in my unit or will the ozone destroy these toxins before my food absorbs it? If I am endangering my health because of these toxins, will rinsing them in a colander or glass bowl (after running them through the cycles) get rid of these toxins? I don't mind rinsing them, but if I have to wash them again, I wonder if it's worth the trouble.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm otherwise happy with the product. I bought some organic lemons yesterday that I cleaned with the unit. After one cleaning cycle, it turns out there was a detergent or some cruddy foaming mess that was on the lemons that the machine removed BEAUTIFULLY! I had to put it through a second cycle to get it all off, but now I have nice clean lemons. I just can't shake the fear of petroleum produced toxins in my food. Should I be worried?

I would not worry about the ozone and bpa. All of us have that chemical in our blood already; it's impossible to avoid in modern society.

Ozone is 03. Common oxygen is 02. The third oxygen atom is not stable. It will jump off and react with the first thing it can. Typically, the first thing it hits to react with is an anaerobic organism, which from our perspective are mostly bad, like mold, mildew, fungus, and bad bacteria. Your vegetable washer's ozone will find some sort of germ to react with and turn itself to o2 long before it is able to degrade the plastic. When you read about ozone degrading plastic, that's in a sealed environment. Ozone will cause problems to both people and plants if it builds up faster than it can shed that extra Oxygen atom. Then it starts to react with things you don't want it to react with.

Regarding the original question of using an ozone sterilizer in a hydro reservoir, it's like using peroxide. It kills all your bacteria, good and bad. That's good if you have an excess of bad bacteria such as pythium. But for a healthy reservoir with a good bacterial balance, it's not something you need. There's no benefit to an already healthy system.

We are the ozone generator manufacturer. Ozone air dissolves in water to make ozone water. Ozone air and ozone water can purify air or treat water, disinfection and sterilization. But when you choose it, you must know the room size you will purify or how much water you will treat in an hour, base on such information, then choose correct ozone output of ozone generator. When you use ozone generator, you have to take care for your safe, because ozone above PPM data will be danger to our body. Any detailed information, you can check our home page www.pdm-electronic.com OR you can write to me: pdmelectronic.com
I am glad to help you.

Anyone considering using ozonation should consider that ozone is quite harsh and may react with your manganese to precipitate out and subsequently lost as a plant nutrient if you use it in a nutrient solution instead of just to disinfect water before use.

Huanying to the forum pdm. Does ozonation break down chloramines? If so, with the ammonia go into solution as ammonium nitrogen and what of the Chloride, will it go into solution as a salt ion instead of any being released as chlorine air?

While an ozone generator in which a hobby gardener has to run around worrying about lethal Ozone production sounds like a cool thing to do, wouldn't you agree it is completely a waste of money and energy for hydroponic hobbyists? Like Cohl and others said above, all we need is a little hydrogen peroxide on an "as-needed" basis if we want an ocassional harsh disinfectant that somewhat damages roots and kill good microbes too, which can help a healthy system be more robust in performance. And if you happen to live in the Los Angeles basis the air is already well ozonated for free, good to know ozone water is free during rush hour ;-)